A starry sky over a winter forest scene. The constellation Orion is rising,

The Sky for December 2024

The celestial events visible in the sky for December 2024.

The Sky for December 2024

Posted on by Scott Young
Posted on: Wednesday November 27, 2024

Winter nights start early and last long, making them perfect for star watching. Except for the temperature… and the clouds… Catch a clear December night, though, and you’ll be treated to the brightest stars and planets in the sky.

Comet Updates

The great fall comet, 2023 A3 (Tsuchinshen-ATLAS) has come and (mostly) gone, providing some beautiful views in October and November. It’s still in the evening sky, but only visible with telescopes as it rockets away from the inner solar system.

Another comet, Comet 2024 G3 (ATLAS), was discovered by the same program that helped find 2023A3 – the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS. This comet, a so-called “sun-grazer” will likely get quite bright, but only be visible in the daytime sky and from the southern hemisphere, so that means most Manitobans won’t be able to see it.

The Solar System

Mercury passes between Earth and Sun (and slightly above the Sun as viewed from Earth), so it remains invisible until the second half of December, when it appears low in the southeastern sky just before sunrise. On the morning of December 28, the thin crescent Moon is nearby, next to the reddish star Antares.

Venus spends the month in the evening sky, low in the southwest after sunset. The thin crescent Moon approaches on the 3rd, is nearby on the 4th, and is still close on the 5th, making a nice photo op. It stands a little higher at sunset each night, and sets about three hours after sunset. In a telescope, Venus displays phases like the Moon, and in December it is about 50% illuminated, a tiny half-moon shape at high power.

Mars rises in the northeast about 9pm in early December, and a bit after 7pm by month’s end. By midnight it is high in the south, providing the clearest telescope views. Mars reaches its best next month, its closest point to Earth on this orbit, but it’s worth looking at now.

The planet Jupiter and two of its moons.
The planet Jupiter’s intricate clouds bands and visible through a telescope. Two of its largest moons are seen at right. [Image: S. Young]
December 2024 belongs to Jupiter, The giant planet reaches opposition on December 7, 2024, rising at sunset, hitting its highest altitude in the south around local midnight, and not setting until sunrise. Jupiter dominates the evening sky, outshining everything else except Venus and the Moon. A small telescope will reveal some of Jupiter’s banded clouds, while its four largest moons are visible in binoculars as tiny “stars” in a line on either side of the planet.

Saturn is low in the south at sunset, and sets before midnight. The rings are nearly edge-on as seen from Earth, but visible in a telescope with more than about 30x magnification. Saturn edges closer to Venus and the setting sun each night, making it lower and harder to get clear telescopic views.

Sky Calendar for December 2024

Dec. 1 : New Moon

Dec. 4: The thin crescent Moon is below Venus, just after sunset, low in the southwestern sky.

Dec. 5: The thin crescent Moon is to the left of Venus in the southwestern sky, just after sunset.

Dec. 7:  Jupiter at opposition, visible all night.

Dec. 7: The crescent Moon is below and to the right of Saturn in the evening sky.

Dec. 8: The First Quarter Moon is to the left of Saturn in the evening sky.

Dec. 13-14: Peak of the Geminid meteor shower. The nearyl-full Moon will reduce the number of meteors seen, but you can still expect 20-40 meteors per hour in late evening and early morning.

Dec. 14: The nearly-full Moon forms a line with Jupiter and the bright star Aldebaran in the eastern sky.

Dec. 15: Full Moon

Dec. 17: The waning gibbous Moon is just above Mars as the pair rises in the East about 7:15 p.m. local time.

Dec. 21: The winter solstice occurs at 4:20 a.m. Central Time, marking the beginning of astronomical winter in the northern hemisphere (and the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere).

Dec. 22: Last Quarter Moon

Dec. 22-23: The peak of the Ursids meteor shower, which radiate from near the North Star. They only produce a few meteors per hour, though.

Scott Young

Scott Young

Planetarium Astronomer

Scott is the Planetarium Astronomer at the Manitoba Museum, developing astronomy and science programs. He has been an informal science educator for thirty years, working in the planetarium and science centre field both at The Manitoba Museum and also at the Alice G. Wallace Planetarium in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Scott is an active amateur astronomer and a past-President of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

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The Sky for August 2024

Posted on by Scott Young

August brings the return of some planets to the evening sky, the most famous meteor shower of the year, and longer nights than we’ve seen for a couple of months. The Milky Way is on full display, offering an unforgettable view from a dark, moonless sky. Unfortunately all of these benefits will likely be offset by smoke in the air from forest fires across Canada, which has become a fixture of summertime observing for the last several years.

The Perseid Meteor Shower

The annual Perseid meteor shower is the most famous meteor shower of the year, although it is not the best one of the year. Its occurrence in August during summer vacation likely makes it more accessible than the much better Geminids, which occur in mid-December. For a complete rundown on the Perseid meteor shower, check out this blog post.

2024 is a good year for the Perseids, since the peak time occurs with the Moon out of the sky. The thing about meteor showers is, they peak in the few hours before dawn for any given location. So to see the Perseids at their best, you want to observe from about 1:30 a.m. to dawn. There will be almost no meteors before midnight – you might see one or two, and the ones you do see will likely be bright ones, but it won’t be much of a “shower” unless you stay up all night.

To observe the Perseids, get away from city lights. Light pollution will wash out the fainter meteors, and there are a lot more faint meteors than bright ones. Bring a reclining lawn chair and blanket to ward off the early-morning chill, and set up facing the darkest part of the sky (or straight up, if you’re in a nice dark spot). Turn off your electronic devices and your car’s lights – any stray light will make it hard to see the meteors for you and anyone near you. The meteors only last a second or two, so you need to watch the sky continuously – literally, don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

You can also try and take pictures of meteors – set up your camera on a tripod and take a bunch of time exposures of the sky. If you’re lucky, a meteor will happen while you’re taking a picture.

We’d love to show your Perseid pics on Dome@Home, our online astronomy show. Send them to space@manitobamuseum.ca and then tune in to our August 28th show at 7 p.m. Central on the Museum’s Facebook and YouTube channels.

The Solar System

Finally, some planets are visible in the evening sky! Barely…

Mercury is still on the evening side of the sky, but in August it sets just after the Sun and so isn’t visible for Canadian viewers. Folks farther south still have have a chance to catch it early in the month, low in the west just after sunset.

Venus has appeared in the evening sky, although like Mercury it is still low in the sky; only its great brightness allows it to be spotted very low soon after sunset. The thin crescent moon is nearby on August 5th.

Mars rises about 2 a.m. local time in the northeast, inconspicuous compared to nearby Jupiter and both the Pleaides and Hyades star clusters. Mars and Jupiter pass less than half a degree apart on the morning of August 14th; see the Sky Calendar entry below for details.

A simulated view of Saturn and its rings.

Jupiter is the brightest “star” in the eastern sky after midnight, outshining all the visible stars as it cruises through the stars of Taurus. The waning crescent Moon is nearby on the morning of August 27.

Saturn rises about 11 p.m. local time early in the month, and moves into the south by dawn. The ringed planet reaches opposition on September 8, so it’s coming into its best viewing position for the year. The rings are only tilted about 4 degrees to our line of sight, making them appear very thin from our point of view. The nearly-full Moon is to Saturn’s left on the evening of the 21st.

Sky Calendar for August 2024

Click on highlighted dates for a star chart showing the view!

Aug 4: New Moon

Aug 11 – Aug 12 (morning sky): Best viewing for the annual Perseids meteor shower; see featured article above. Decent rates should occur the morning before and after as well.

Aug 12 (evening sky): First Quarter Moon

Aug 14 (morning sky): Jupiter and Mars are close together in the morning sky, separated by less than the size of the Full Moon. They’re still pretty close the morning before and after this date.

Aug 19: Full Moon

Aug 20-21 (after midnight into morning sky): The waxing gibbous Moon is to the left of and slightly above Saturn. The two are only about 3 degrees (6 Full Moon diameters) apart, fitting easily into the same binocular field-of-view.

Aug 26: Last Quarter Moon

Aug 27 (morning sky): The waning crescent Moon is above Jupiter, rising together in the morning sky about 1 a.m. local time in the morning sky. Mars is below and to the left, forming a not-quite-right triangle. The red supergiant star Aldebaran is to Jupiter’s right along with the Hyades star cluster, with the Pleaides above them all. The morning rising of these star clusters remind us that winter is coming.

Aug 28 (morning sky): The Moon, Mars, and Jupiter form a very squashed triangle pointing downwards in the eastern sky before dawn.

Aug: 29 (morning sky): By this morning the Moon has moved farther on, still forming a rough line with Mars and Jupiter in the early morning sky.

Scott Young

Scott Young

Planetarium Astronomer

Scott is the Planetarium Astronomer at the Manitoba Museum, developing astronomy and science programs. He has been an informal science educator for thirty years, working in the planetarium and science centre field both at The Manitoba Museum and also at the Alice G. Wallace Planetarium in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Scott is an active amateur astronomer and a past-President of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

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Meteor Showers in Summer (2024 Edition)

Posted on by Scott Young

Meteors

A meteor (a.k.a. falling star, shooting star) looks like a bright streak across the starry sky that lasts for a second or two before fading away. Most people believe they are rare enough that you should make a wish when you see one, but they are surprisingly common if you watch the sky a lot. On any given night with no Moon, if you get away from city lights and watch the sky continuously, you’ll see up to a half-dozen meteors per hour. Any light sources – the Moon, city lights, you phone – will reduce that number to near zero.

Each meteor you see is actually a tiny piece of dust about the size of a grain of sand which is burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Space isn’t empty, you see – it’s dusty, with all the dust leftover from the big construction job that was the formation of the solar system. As the Earth orbit the Sun, it plows through the dust at over 100,000 kilometers per hour. It’s a one-sided collision, and the poor speck of dust disintegrates in a flash of light that we can see from the ground as a meteor.

A diagram of the solar system showing the Perseid meteor stream.

Meteor Showers

So far, so good – you can see these little specks of dust as they vaporize, and they pretty much occur randomly all the time, we just don’t usually notice. But, it turns out that space isn’t evenly dusty. There are spots, just like in your house, that have more dust than others. In my house, these dust bunnies congregate under the furniture and anyplace the air vents push them; in the solar system these dust bunnies remain where they were shed, in the orbital paths of comets. The solar system is crisscrossed by trails of dust left behind by various comets (and a few asteroids). If the Earth’s orbit intersects one of those trails, we will fly through an interplanetary dust bunny every year around the same time. That’s a meteor shower.

The name “meteor shower” makes you think you can see a lot more meteors than on other nights. But here’s the thing: “a lot” can mean different things. Forty times the normal rate sounds like a lot, until you remember it’s forty times about one meteor per hour. There are over a hundred meteor showers catalogued, but there are only a couple of meteor showers a year that produce more than forty meteors an hour. Even during an official meteor “shower”, you can probably only expect to see a half-dozen meteors per hour, and that’s under perfect skies with your eyes watching the sky 100% of the time.

The Perseids for 2024

So, most meteor showers don’t produce many meteors; that’s the bad news. The good news is, the Perseids in August is one of them, which makes them probably the most famous meteor shower of all. And, in 2024 the Moon will be out of the sky during the crucial morning hours. If you can get away from city lights under a clear, dark sky, you might see up to 60 meteors an hour – one a minute – in the early morning hours of August 12.

That’s pretty specific timing, but luckily the Perseids “dust bunny” is more than one day wide. The Earth actually enters the outer edge of it in late July, and each morning the rates will increase until the peak on the 11th-12th. So, we have several chances to see a decent Perseids display this year.

The key point to remember is that all meteor showers are best between about 1:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. local time. Pre-midnight observing might be 1/10 or less of the morning rates. Really, you have to stay up all night to see this.

To get the best view, get as far away from city lights as practical, and set up a reclining lawn chair or blanket so you can lean back and see as much of the sky as possible. Keep all the lights around you off, especially if you are in a park of other spot with other observers. One peek at your phone will shut off the natural night vision of your eyes for up to ten minutes, so you really need to avoid looking at any lights. (If you need to keep your car running, cover the headlights with a blanket or something so you don’t blast the whole park with your lights!) If you have any lights nearby, put them behind you out of your view, and just watch the sky. You don’t need a telescope or binoculars – in fact, those instruments restrict your field of view so much that you probably won’t see any meteors through them at all. The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, and they only last a second or two – literally, don’t blink or you can miss them.

Meteors and Cameras

You can take pictures of meteors, but it involves a little luck, and some understanding of your camera. If you have a DSLR or mirrorless camera, you can put it on a tripod and set your exposure manually for something like 5 or 10 seconds – you’ll get a lot of pictures of stars, but if you’re lucky a meteor will happen while you’re shooting, and it will show up in one picture.

If you’re using your phone camera, you might need to download a better camera app than the one your phone came with – check out the app store for one that is designed for night or sky photography. The same tactic applies – take lots of pictures, and hope you catch one. Make sure the light from your camera doesn’t interfere with your vision, though – just take the pictures now, and look at them later.

One thing to watch for: satellites. There are piles of satellites that will show up in your images as streaks of light. You can tell satellites by the trail being the same brightness and thickness throughout; meteors tend to start faint and narrow, get brighter and wider, and then trail out again.

Other Summer Meteor Showers

While technically there are other meteor showers in July and August, in practice these are not noticeable to the average observer and are scientific designations only. They’re named after the constellation or star that the meteors appear to radiate from, but most of them produce a meteor every couple of hours or so – not even a spritzing, let alone a shower. Even the bigger South Delta Aquariid meteor shower, which peaks in late July, only produces about 5 meteors an hour at best. If you are interested in these minor meteor showers, there is backyard science that can be done by tracking them with a camera, though; visit the International Meteor Organization for some great information on getting deeper into the science of meteor observing.

tl;dr: The morning of August 12th between 1:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. you will probably see quite a few meteors. The morning before and after, you’ll still see a good number. The rest of the summer, you’ll hardly see any, but you might see one anytime you are looking at the stars.